This week, we continued practicing the Bb7 bebop scale. We traded fours and eights, solo and in duet, using the scale and the rules we came up with last time. We, then, added chromatics notes between the 1st and the 3rd of the scale (e.g. Bb, B, C, C#, D, Eb, F, G, Ab, A, Bb) and did the same exercises.
February 2010 Archives
Welcome back to the Roaring Fork Jazz Workshop for Spring 2010! We're back with a vengeance!
We'll be meeting every other Monday, in one large swinging group. Check out the calendar for workshop dates. Our sessions, this spring, will have a fairly narrow focus, for a change. Here are some goals:
- continuing to learn how to get around fluidly on your instrument with a good tone, and good time
- developing more coherent linear phrasing
- injecting chromaticism into your melodies
We'll be tending to the blues and rhythm changes, using, as the foundation, bebop scales.
Last night, we played over a Bb7 chord/scale using the mixolydian bebop scale. We played through some exercises, confining ourselves (temporarily) to the following rules:
- only diatonic motion (no arpeggios or skips)
- start phrase on beat one (kind of an arbitrary rule, but a rule, for now)
- if starting on a non-chord tone, make it a quarter note (there are other ways of handling starting on non-chord tones, and we'll get to those)
- change direction only on chord tones
We traded fours, using the scale/rules and one of the two common phrase endings, as described in David Baker's "How to Play Bebop" series.
